Authors Note: I own nothing. No ownership rights to Beverly Hills 90210.

Chapter Eight

When I drive into our driveway I see the lights are still on. Thank god. I need my best friend right about now. Walking into the house I follow the noise to the kitchen and see Roy pottering around making tea and if I'm not mistaken toast. He must sense me as he looks up and gives a sheepish smile, "okay so you know how the bread in this country is too sweet well I was mentioning it to someone at the studio and they said there was an Irish bakery in Santa Monica. So I popped over today… it's not English bread but it's almost as good and it's a vast improvement from the sweet cake like substance that would last even another ice age that you buy here."

The man had many weaknesses but none so amusing than marmalade on toast with a pot of tea. "How much have you eaten?"

"Love what's a number in the face of enjoyment?"

"How much?" I look over the counter it's hard to tell how big the loaf was especially as it's not pre cut.

"Hardly anything when you consider the month I've been denied my one treat."

"One treat? Mr Randolph how many chocolate oranges did you stuff in my bag and yours before we left? How many now remain? Should we then discuss your regular weekend plea of scones-"

"I help with that."

"You brush the tops with a beaten egg-"

"Darling that is significant as it gives them that golden look."

I roll my eyes, "how much bread?"

He sighs, "this is my seventh piece but I have spread them out over many hours. I was actually quite proud of myself." I shake my head and come and steal half of his now cut marmalade toast, his loud exhale tells me he is unimpressed by the gesture. "You'll need tea with that Love. If you are going to be a thief you should at least go all the way." He quickly pours me a cup with a dash of milk- must be English breakfast then.

As he comes over to the table with his own tea and half of his toast he clocks my overall mood. "So another wonderful catch-up here in California?"

"It wasn't bad well not all the time, it actually was kind of nice except for the beginning and the end." He nods his head to continue, "I found out my parents well my father at least set this whole thing in motion, began my destruction here. He blackmailed Dylan to get me to go to Paris-"

"Dylan didn't have to take it. I don't agree with your father's behaviour most of the time but to think that one hard word to get you on a plane… well to blame him for those two year's it seems a little much Love."

"He told Dylan that I go to Paris or he freezes his trust and the trust assets meaning his house, he was basing the freeze as justifiable as he was going to have Dylan accused of statutory rape. I assume the claim being that Dylan was using the trust to break the law."

His shock is palpable, "well I stand corrected that would definitely set the ball in motion, especially with everything you and Iris have told me about Dylan-"

"Bugger Iris. She doesn't know, she has the right to know. He's been holding on to that for years it explains why he became so hesitant in my house. He stopped wanting my father's approval after that summer, and even avoided my house when I got back. I imagine that's why my parents being involved in the intervention didn't have the impact the gang wanted. I should call her."

"Now?"

"They are three hours behind it's still mid evening over there. And while Iris is a meditate before the dawn person I think she'll want this information immediately even if it makes for a late night."

"Yes I imagine you are right, but before you go how do you feel?"

"I honestly don't know. My dad started the ball but Dylan and Brandon kept pushing it along. I guess if the three of us were as close as I thought someone should have grabbed it and asked why? What happened? But no one did. Maybe that's the point, maybe it was a test to see if our love and commitment was as real as we claimed. Dylan not saying anything to me and going along with it was a clear sign to my father that we were breakable."

"You might be right but I'm surprised he didn't intervene, I assume he'd have felt remorse when he saw that in breaking the two of you up he broke you as well."

I stand and move my tea cup to the sink, "no that would have made it worse. The Walsh way is to fall, stand back up, brush off the dirt, and then keep going. I just fell, no wonder he stopped respecting me after that."

"Love you may have struggled to find your feet, but you got back up and have since climbed new heights all on your own."

"He thinks it's because of you."

"Yes well I have given you a safe haven but that's all. You know I love you darling but I'm an arrogant man I wouldn't risk my money or reputation on casting you in a role that you weren't perfect for. We've lived together for a year and as you know you have not been given every part, every lead. You are my greatest muse but I wouldn't jeopardise either of our reputations for sentimentality."

"I know I'm still cut I lost that part in November."

He sighs in his dramatic way this was a regular dig I had at him, "you would have been unconvincing not because of your acting but because of your looks, as if anyone would believe you would not be seen as breathtaking by society."

After putting away my cup I go over and give him a kiss on the head. "I will be complaining about that part for at least another decade."

As I leave the room he calls out, "and I will be proclaiming you not suitable for the role for the next decade. No amount of makeup could make you look haggard."

It took a half hour on the phone with Iris to calm her down, she wanted to ring my father, she wanted to ring my mother, and she wanted to ring Dylan. My father would be an ear lashing, my mother a reckoning on how much she knew and when, Dylan a mix of anger and frustration. A seventeen year old no matter how mature could not match the man who had control of his finances, the man he needed on his side to see his girlfriend, and the man he desperately wanted to be welcomed into the family by.

To calm her down I tried to convince her it's old news. A found and important piece in a puzzle that has long since been abandoned and thrown away. Iris though who was a staunch advocate of me not seeing Dylan said the piece even without the puzzle still needed exploring. She felt I should know the significance of it and determine how much of the complete picture it would have given, how it shaped much of my and Dylan's past.

"Iris why? It's not going to change anything."

"You said you went quiet for a few minutes after Brandon told you. Tell me darling did you think of my son in that time?"

"Of course."

"Anger?"

"Yes."

"Hurt?"

"Yes."

"Sympathy?"

"Yes."

"Hope?"

I sigh we didn't lie to each other, "yes."

"You lost the final bit of that when he didn't go to London after dropping Erica here. You realised that it was done lost for good. Six months of no hope did it feel nice to have it again?"

I'm quieter when I answer knowing I'm admitting to something I'm not proud of, "yes."

"Have you been able to squash it or are you running what if fantasy's in your mind?"

I avoid answering directly not ready to admit it to her or me. "Iris those fantasy's give me nothing. Two years of them hiding out in my room liking my imagination more than the real world, it gave me nothing."

"I know but hope is amazing but a dangerous emotion when misplaced. I stayed with Jack for years because of it. You won't be able to move on now with it there, you won't be able to find anybody else if you have even a shred left. Darling I know you even with no hope you are still vulnerable to him, with hope it's worse though. You'll dwell on the what if's, find commitment in the fantasy of him. You'll forget to live again."

"So I what, ask him why? Understand the impact, and open myself up to another chance? Iris you know as well as I that Dylan is going to keep repeating patterns. This week he loves me when it gets even remotely tough he'll leave and remember Kelly is his soulmate. When that blows up again he'll repeat the cycle with me or another girl. Maybe Val will get another turn. It seems the brunettes are interchangeable but there can only be one blonde in this drama."

"Darling I know my son's weaknesses they are like a mirror image of Jack's, always seeing the grass greener never happy with their lot but my son wasn't always like that, Dylan was happy. Deliriously happy. At one stage he didn't want anything but you. He has never felt that with anyone else, Kelly couldn't hold his attention without creating drama and even then he was constantly looking at you. Your father's actions made him doubt the stability of that, and while I don't see him ever trusting it again; being the man he was becoming the man capable to stay when it gets tough, it's not about him. It's not his hope I worry about, it's yours. You'll stay true to it, you'll stay alone because of it. Mixing the love of your life with even a speckle of hope will see you become stationary again."

"What are you suggesting Iris? More counselling?"

"No just talk it out with him, don't ignore it. Hear what that meant to him, ask your questions and get closure."

"You don't think I'll slip again?"

"Darling you may but…" I know what she is saying and I know she hates speaking badly of her son.

"When he disappoints me again the hope will die, and let's face it I didn't get to order a drink last time I saw him before he had already hurt me again, I imagine it will be the same this time."

"I'm sorry darling, I love you both together but I also love you and I don't want you to end up alone like me. I don't want you unable to move on, hurt so much that you don't trust your judgment at all."

"Or living in a fantasy that he is still that guy I fell in love with or could one day be again given enough time."

I hated Iris for being a truth teller but she was right I needed to address this head on like everything else. It made me angry that I had brushed off that feeling, and I knew it was there I had begun to nurture the what if's on the way home. My therapist in London hated that game I played, it made me no longer present in the here and now, and instead living in the make believe past or the fantasy future. So many times I sat in her office at the end of that summer playing the rationalisation game, he's drinking once he stops he'll read my letters and call. He's broke and feels like a fool for being taken advantage of by them. Once he finds his strength like he did that summer when Jack was imprisoned and he asks for help he'll reach out to me.

I finally stopped playing when he arrived back in LA, I resented every moment I'd wasted on it when Kelly told me about his past life claim. I'd got a new tattoo when I heard about his world trip offer. I looked at my wrist now removing my watch and took stock of the small tattoo of a water drop dropping into a pool. It represented being in the here and now. Looking at it I got angry at myself, I got angry that being near him around even my brother could effect me, bring back the possibilities. "Iris I'm twenty year's old, for fuck sake I've slept with three people and I can't get past my high school boyfriend I want this to fucking stop already. I've accepted that I'll never know love like that again that it's intensity was unique but I don't want it anyway, having that love has given me nothing but pain."

"I understand the anger but Darling speak the truth lying to yourself is not the way." Of course she heard the lie, she had a radar now for them. She blamed it on year's of living with Jack.

"Fine since I got stopped at that Mexican border it's been nothing but misery."

"I know." She quiet for a moment, "Darling can you take a few day's to go away and clear your head? I know a great retreat in the desert there, find your equilibrium before you talk to him." Shit I must sound bad if she wants me to meditate, she hasn't suggested it since he touched back down in California.

"No we start filming on Monday I need this sorted I need to have my focus on the filming."

"What are you going to do then?"

"I have the morning off tomorrow I guess I'm going to see if your son wants to meet me for a coffee and a walk. I should go call him now I assume he hasn't changed his home number?"

"Try his cell, let me get the number for you."

After getting off the phone I make sure my cell number was still listed as no number, I take a deep breath, and then ring. He answers on the second ring. "Hello."

"Hi."

He takes a deep breath in like kids do when they are about to do something fun. Our moods used to be more aligned we are now like polar opposite's. "I didn't think you'd call. I didn't even know you had this number."

"Your Mum gave it to me."

"I can't imagine she is pleased you asked for it she wants you to stay away from me."

"She actually encouraged me to call-"

"Oh… oh, you told her." My twin obviously moves fast.

"Yes. I may have bought you a few day's but be ready she's got a few words for you."

"It's deserved I should have told you. I'm sorry I didn't. I should of told her as well she made the Trust she had the right to know he was weaponising it against us." Oh now it's an us. Well if it had been I would have been informed. No the us is just him rewriting history.

This is pointless I cant have an honest conversation with a person who has grown an aversion to the truth. Before I can end this farce of a call he fills the silence down the phone line, "not that I saw it like that at the time. If I had I would have never gone for a drive after that meeting I would have gone home to you and been completely honest. No at the time I saw it as his attempt at controlling me."

I stay silent, "remember the one time you met Jack?" I don't answer I know he is referencing our first date. "It felt like that, being dragged from the room against my will being scolded for doing what he asked. Berated publicly. I knew you could hear him that night, Jack loved yelling loud enough for everyone to know who was boss. Going home and telling you, telling my mum, telling Brandon felt like I'd be berated again. Shown to everyone that I was so bad for you that the great Jim Walsh the dream father we all wanted, the man we all respected who appeared so honourable, I was so bad so dangerous for you that he threw away all his morals just to get rid of me. My ego at the time made it all about what it must say about me, that I must have been fooling myself for those two year's. I hadn't changed I was still that guy from freshman year who drank, got high, slept around, didn't care about anything, pretended to be someone he wasn't. That guy wasn't good enough for you, even I knew that. That summer I became him again. I've been him ever since… except for five day's."

He takes a breath. "Jim's not speaking to you. The honourable father is not talking to his daughter because you didn't fall in line. Like you weren't falling in line that summer. I'm starting to look back now with new eye's. It say's a lot more about him than it ever said about me, that the threat was because of what he lacked and not what I did." I don't know what to say, I don't want to fall into this spiral again but I can feel it pulling at me. "Bren do you think I'm right that it was Jim not me?"

I focus on my drop of water and not the voice he is using; the voice he used when we sat on that bed in that honeymoon cabin asking for me, "yes. He tried it again in freshman year when I wouldn't call off my engagement to Stuart. He likes to manipulate me into falling into line, or in that case convinced you again to manipulate me into doing what he wanted."

"He didn't manipulate me on that one Bren. He asked but I was looking for grounds to step in, I just didn't want to ruin your happiness. Your Dad on that one gave me the push, it was me though I didn't want you marrying him or anyone else, but I especially didn't want you marrying him- my ex drug dealer."

"Your what?"

His voice gets hesitant he knows in his honesty he said too much. "He was the Manager of Eve-"

"The manager who used to sell you booze and party drugs? He would have been older than we are now when he did that."

"Bren-"

"You didn't think that was information I should have known back then, even without my father asking you to intervene? When you found out I was dating him you didn't think I had the right to now what he was capable of?"

"I thought you knew we knew each other from the LA scene?" He was trying to back track.

"Knowing each other from clubs, and him selling a kid booze and drugs is not the same thing. Dylan he was doing that a year older than us now. In a year's time Erica will be fifteen. The type of man at twenty one who is capable of doing that do you think in four years he could have changed his complete moral fibre that much? And even if you thought he had you didn't respect me to be the judge of that? You didn't care enough about me to not walk into a situation fucking blind?"

"I tried to sto-"

"You tried to manipulate me with a fucking poem and pretend wishes for the future. God your aversion for the truth knows no bound's. You were too busy moaning about the sleaze John Sears to anyone who would listen, annoyed and concerned that your ex would risk getting mixed up with him again but your other ex, no her you don't want to spoil her happiness- it doesn't matter she's unaware it's with a guy who used to sell drugs and alcohol to children." I take a breath and then speak calmly again, "thank you for the chat I got exactly what I needed. Night."

I stare at the phone, Brandon doesn't say a word. I know he heard, we are sitting on the stools in his kitchen he was close enough to hear it all. I look at my call history, even if she hadn't blocked her number what could I call back and say, I hadn't seen you smile in months properly that is and you were. You didn't want me so I thought if he could make you happy maybe he changed. That as irrational as it sounds I was angry at you for sleeping with him so soon into dating him, angry that you would run into a lifelong commitment without even a thought of me, angry that here I was getting carjacked and you weren't there for me- too focused on him. The only one who knew what that experience was like and you ignored it because you were wrapped up in him. Angry that before that gun was pulled on, that as I drove away from Kelly's I thought maybe now you'd be open to trying again.

"Dylan that's not all on you. You told me and I didn't tell her either, even before that plane to Vegas not knowing the full story I knew when in your past he was from. I knew the club name. Bren knows all the details of your life during that time she could have joined the dot's. She knew that you guy's knew each other from the LA scene, I'm guessing from her instant connection tonight just from his job title that I could have told her the limited parts I knew after the anniversary party and she'd have figured it out."

"No it's on me. I was angry at her for a few things, I was keeping my distance-"

"Dylan I don't remember you being angry at her or fighting with her, you guy's never fought even when you were together. Look I know you were angry in general because of the carjacking..." I give him a look it takes a few seconds, "it's like fate was playing a game. The night she decides to try dating again, you and Kelly break up and you get held up. The one person who knows you, knows how to talk and comfort you better than anyone else, and knows what that experience was like is suddenly focusing on moving on just when you need her."

"I always need her." I go back to staring at my phone. "Brandon she rang she wanted to talk and then she didn't." I flip the phone over willing it to ring again. "Jones after everything you told me tonight, how she thinks I'm incapable of not hurting her, incapable of not repeating the same mistakes that I've made over and over again. After hearing that conversation… there is no chance is there?"

"Dylan I don't know. You guy's… you know the story right of the surgery of feeling the pain of the other?" I nod, "doesn't happen often but really strong stuff we feel like music beats through a wall. It's duller than our own feeling but we feel the echoes of it. She loved you, at times it was like I was living next to a rave with how loud that beat was, how I could hear it pounding. Even my own feelings of love, well I know the echoes of her beats would almost drown out my own internal ones if they had ever been played at the same time." He take's a sip of his coffee, "I haven't heard any sounds since the morning of your park walk. She felt anxious, really anxious like on some level she knew it had been decided. She was anxious enough for me to feel it as we drove to school." He taps his mug, "after that morning I've never felt her since. It's like her room next door went quiet. I could see her cry, I could hear her listening to REM but I couldn't feel it. I thought it meant the pain wasn't strong enough, I thought it meant that she was hurt but would be fine. It took me months to realise that I felt nothing from her, that I hadn't in months. I never had gone that long before. I thought it was because we were so distant that we had grown apart, I didn't realise how much I relied on it to help me understand her. Leaving for Minnesota, her return from Minnesota, her sudden unwillingness to join anything when the previous year she organised how much of our senior class activities-"

"Only until Christmas, she stopped after that. Stopped when I needed to take more than a nanosecond to consider which cookie."

"You know she told me, I thought she had wounded pride, I thought she was being dramatic because I couldn't feel any of it so it must not be as bad as she said it was. She told me after the park that she never thought she'd lose. She went along with the idea because she thought you wouldn't not choose her." He taps his fingers against his mug again, god I wish I had chosen her given her the option of deciding if she could forgive me for the summer the lies. "I couldn't feel it not because they weren't intense, I couldn't feel them because she was no longer in that room was she? She was no longer next door feeling her emotions, she was fucking drowning in them sinking to the bottom."

I don't respond, but that about sum's it up. That's what it felt like at the start of our sophomore summer. What it felt like when she left my house to catch a flight to London. When he told me she wasn't coming home. When she wasn't there when I opened my eyes in the hospital bed. It was being trapped in the dark, not able to breathe, feeling the pressure bearing down on you from the water, keeping you stuck on that ocean floor. The pressure stripping your muscles of the energy to swim back to the surface, even if in your mind you want to try.

"Dylan I know how much love was there but I don't know, I don't know if she can get past this, especially as you said every time she's slapped with another unknown pain from your past-"

"Well then that's the problem." We both turn at the voice, Val was leaning against the doorframe listening intently.

"How long have you been there?"

"Long enough to know you're fucked."

I turn back around and look at my phone, "yeah."

"Brandon's right though you're going to get no where if she's constantly seeing just moments of your past and the shit moments at that."

"She knows all the others as well she lived them-"

"From her perspective, and yeah she may know the story but when you're hurt you stop focusing on the good, you stop seeing it all in its entirety. The bad is what shines the most. You need to remind her of all of it and share the stuff you never have. Make her remember what you guy's are like together. Make her understand it was not a rejection of her but a punishment of you."

"How do you know it was that Val?"

"Wasn't that what we were doing together, punishing ourselves for being so weak that we needed her to come back here to make us be alright? Being angry at ourselves that we had been waiting for her to come back and fix us because we were incapable of doing it without her?"

"Yeah."

Brandon just shakes his head at that, "don't throw stones from your glass house Brandon. McKay and I might be a different level of fucked up than you realise but we don't own the market on self-sabotage especially when we are feeling vulnerable. I mean whatever did happen to Mondale?"

Before this can become a recount of Brandon's biggest fuck ups I look to Val. "So what are you suggesting I somehow force her into a room and make her listen to our story again to remind her of the good times?" She looks at me amused and shakes her head, "write letters that I can't imagine she will read?"

"Close but yeah she won't read those though she is an actress starting her film career-"

I give her a look clearly not understanding what she is getting at and in no mood to try and play Val's games. "I know-"

"She'll be finished this project in a few months go on a press tour for the first movie and as she's deferred the year she isn't due back at school till the end of next summer. I imagine she'll be needing to fill her time. I imagine knowing our type A girl she'll be wanting to have her new year all set up with her next project before she goes out to promote the movie-"

"Val what are you suggesting?"

"That you want to be a writer so write. Write your girl a screenplay of your love story, the good and the bad. Make her understand it all, show her that you get it."

"You want me to make a movie?"

"No I want you to write a fantastic script that as an actress she can't put down. I want you to help her remember those feelings, remember what it's like to trust you to count on you."

"If it's from me she won't read it-"

"So it's from I don't know Michael…" she looks down on the bench and sees the mail. "Michael Hillcrest… no Michael Crest."

I look to Brandon to see if he thinks this is as crazy as it sounds, "D it could work or at least get her open to the idea. I mean she always been romantic and dreamy, what's more romantic and dreamy than a guy writing you your love story for the silver screen."